Darwin Is A Problem For Jews
Sound of Trumpet
Darwin is a Problem for Jews
The Jerusalem Post ^ | 4/18/2006 | David Klinghoffer
Posted on 04/18/2006 10:31:13 AM PDT by Zionist Conspirator
Did the software in the cell, DNA, write itself? Is genetic information
the only information that science has ever encountered that was not
generated by an intelligent agent? These are some of the questions
raised by the scientific and cultural war going on over Charles
Darwin's theory and its modern challenger, intelligent design.
In an April 6 Jerusalem Post op-ed, the writer and editor Larry
Yudelson took me to task for arguing in numerous venues that the debate
about Darwin is a crucial one for Jews who care about Judaism. If it
was simply Yudelson offering his personal opinion that "Darwin is no
problem for Jews" (the title of his article), I wouldn't have sought
the generous permission of the editor to respond.
But given that Yudelson also summons no less a figure than Maimonides
to the defense of Darwin, along with another rabbinic luminary, Abraham
Isaac Kook, a response is necessary. MAIMONIDES lived seven centuries
before Darwin presented his argument that natural selection operating
on random genetic variation produced you and me. Yet Judaism's greatest
sage of the past millennium was engaged in a strikingly similar
scientific argument in his own time.
That argument centered on the question of whether the universe is
eternal and without a starting point (the position of Aristotle) or
whether it had a beginning in time at the moment of creation
(Maimonides's view).
Larry Yudelson recommends to us the path of Maimonides, "who opposed
his contemporaries who preached the eternity of the world simply
because 'the theory has not been proved' (Guide II:25), while allowing
that were it to be proved, it would not contradict the core Jewish
beliefs."
I wish Mr. Yudelson had read that important chapter in Guide for the
Perplexed more carefully. In fact, the sage writes that he rejects the
eternity of the world for two reasons not, as Yudelson says, just one.
First, Maimonides rejected Aristotle's thinking on this point because
it "has not been demonstrated." But second because it makes nonsense of
the Jewish religion: "If the philosophers would succeed in
demonstrating eternity as Aristotle understands it, the Torah as a
whole would become void, and a shift to other opinions would take
place. I have thus explained to you that everything is bound up with
this problem."
Maimonides was saying that though parts of the Bible's text may indeed
be interpreted in other than a literal fashion, there are philosophical
reasons that make an eternal universe incompatible with the God of the
Torah. Simply put, Aristotle makes God's role in the world, as a
creator and guide, superfluous and impossible. AND DARWINISM does the
very same thing, ascribing all creation to blind material processes, as
Darwin himself wrote: "I would give absolutely nothing for the theory
of natural selection if it requires miraculous additions at any one
stage of descent."
Maimonides would ask if Darwinism nevertheless has been "demonstrated."
Well, Darwin's followers reached a high point of self-confidence in
1959 with the Centennial Celebration held at the University of Chicago
to mark the 100th-year anniversary of the publication of The Origin of
Species. The event was notable for the total conviction on the part of
many speakers that any debate about Darwin was over and done.
But since then, the intellectual trend has changed directions. The
Discovery Institute has compiled a list of Darwin-doubting scientists,
a list currently standing at more than 500 doctoral researchers at
places like Berkeley, Princeton and MIT.
It is now 71 years since Rav Kook died. So obviously in writing the
beautiful and poetic words that Larry Yudelson quotes, Kook was not
aware of the current state of knowledge about microbiology and the
nanotechnology of the cell. Was Kook a close student of Darwin's
writings or of the state of biology even in his own day? Is Yudelson?
In theory, it's very inspiring and idealistic to write, as Kook did,
that: "In general this is an important principle in the conflict of
ideas, that when an idea comes to negate some teaching in the Torah, we
must not, to begin with, reject it, but build the edifice of the Torah
above it, and thereby we ascend higher, and through this ascent, the
ideas are clarified."
In practice, however, there is simply no way to reconcile an idea with
its precise negation. The premise of Judaism is that God commands us on
the basis of his having created us. The question before us, therefore,
is not a simple-minded one of whether the universe was made in six
calendar days, but rather of whether the universe has a need for a God,
period.
In the philosophical system elaborated by Darwin and his disciples,
there is no room for a creator in any sense. To explain the existence
of life without reference to a deity was Darwin's entire purpose.
He developed a theory that answered his own purpose, certainly not ours
as Jews. Given that his idea has neither been unambiguously
demonstrated nor is it congenial to Jewish belief - the two-fold test
of Maimonides - I am bewildered to find Jews who are committed to
Judaism rushing recklessly to Darwin's defense.
Immortalist
Sound of Trumpet wrote:
> http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-religion/1617169/posts
>
>
> Did the software in the cell, DNA, write itself? Is genetic information
> the only information that science has ever encountered that was not
> generated by an intelligent agent? These are some of the questions
> raised by the scientific and cultural war going on over Charles
> Darwin's theory and its modern challenger, intelligent design.
>
RNA is made from "naturally_occuring" nucleotides; Molecules composed
of a nitrogen containing base, a 5-carbon sugar, and one or more
phosphate groups. Long strands of nucleotides form nucleic acids (see
above). The sequence of bases in DNA or RNA represents the genetic
(hereditary) information of a living cell.
www.nutrabio.com/Definitions/definitions_n.htm
In the late 1960s Carl R. Woese of the University of Illinois, Francis
Crick, then at the Medical Research Council in England, and I (working
at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in San Diego)
independently suggested a way out of this difficulty. We proposed that
RNA might well have come first and established what is now called the
RNA world - a world in which RNA catalyzed all the reactions necessary
for a precursor of life's last common ancestor to survive and
replicate. We also posited that RNA could subsequently have developed
the ability to link amino acids together into proteins. This scenario
could have occurred, we noted, if prebiotic RNA had two properties not
evident today: a capacity to replicate without the help of proteins and
an ability to catalyze every step of protein synthesis.
There were a few reasons why we favored RNA over DNA as the originator
of the genetic system, even though DNA is now the main repository of
hereditary information. One consideration was that the ribonucleotides
in RNA are more readily synthesized than are the deoxyribonucleotides
in DNA. Moreover, it was easy to envision ways that DNA could evolve
from RNA and then, being more stable, take over RNA's role as the
guardian of heredity. We suspected that RNA came before proteins in
part because we had difficulty composing any scenario in which proteins
could replicate in the absence of nucleic acids.
During the past 10 years, a fair amount of evidence has lent credence
to the idea that the hypothetical RNA world did exist and lead to the
advent of life based on DNA, RNA and protein. Notably, in 1983 Thomas
R. Cech of the University of Colorado at Boulder and, independently,
Sidney Altman of Yale University discovered the first known ribozymes,
enzymes made of RNA. Until then, proteins were thought to carry out all
catalytic reactions in contemporary organisms. Indeed, the term
"enzyme" is usually reserved for proteins. The first ribozymes
identified could do little more than cut and join preexisting RNA.
Nevertheless, the fact that they behaved like enzymes added weight to
the notion that ancient RNA might also have been catalytic.
http://www.geocities.com/CapeCanaveral/Lab/2948/orgel.html
RNA world hypothesis From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
RNA world hypothesis states that RNA was, before the emergence of the
first cell, the dominant, and probably the only, form of life. The
phrase "The RNA World" was first used by Walter Gilbert in 1986.
This hypothesis is supported by RNA's ability to participate in the
storage, transmission, and duplication of genetic information,
similarly to DNA, coupled with its ability to act as a ribozyme
(similar to an enzyme), catalyzing certain reactions. From the point of
view of reproduction, molecules exist for two basic purposes:
self-replication and catalysis assisting self-replication. DNA is
capable of self-replication, but only assisted by proteins. Proteins
are excellent catalysts, but fail to catalyze processes complex enough
to recreate themselves, individually. RNA is capable of both catalysis
and self-replication.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RNA_world_hypothesis
>
> In the philosophical system elaborated by Darwin and his disciples,
> there is no room for a creator in any sense. To explain the existence
> of life without reference to a deity was Darwin's entire purpose.
>
This doesn't eliminate the possibility that a God created life through
Darwinian evolution, as the fossil record indicates.
Mark K. Bilbo
<1145976071.0...@y43g2000cwc.googlegroups.com>...
> In the philosophical system elaborated by Darwin
It's a theory of biology, not a "philosophical system."
Morons.
--
Mark K. Bilbo
--------------------------------------------------
"Corps chief admits to 'design failure'"
(Took them long enough)
http://makeashorterlink.com/?J3EF62DEC
"As hip as it is for outsiders to blame New Orleans
for everything bad that happened during and after
Hurricane Katrina, the truth is that the people
who lived here were much more prepared for a big
storm than the federal government that promised
us flood protection."
http://makeashorterlink.com/?V180525DC
"Everything New Orleans"
http://www.nola.com
z
What does DNA/Darwin have to do with the question of whether the
universe had a beginning or not? If you grab 10 professional
scientists, you will get ten people who will tell you that 1) Darwin
was essentially right and 2) the universe did have a beginning, in the
big bang. So what's the problem reconciling the two positions?
fla...@verizon.net
People who know nothing about Judaism only make
themselves look foolish in making statements like this.
Susan
kathryn
jcon
Sound of Trumpet wrote:
> http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-religion/1617169/posts
>
>
> Darwin is a Problem for Jews
>
>
> The Jerusalem Post ^ | 4/18/2006 | David Klinghoffer
>
> Posted on 04/18/2006 10:31:13 AM PDT by Zionist Conspirator
>
>
>
> Did the software in the cell, DNA, write itself? Is genetic information
> the only information that science has ever encountered that was not
> generated by an intelligent agent? These are some of the questions
> raised by the scientific and cultural war going on over Charles
> Darwin's theory and its modern challenger, intelligent design.
>
> In an April 6 Jerusalem Post op-ed, the writer and editor Larry
> Yudelson took me to task for arguing in numerous venues that the debate
> about Darwin is a crucial one for Jews who care about Judaism. If it
> was simply Yudelson offering his personal opinion that "Darwin is no
> problem for Jews" (the title of his article), I wouldn't have sought
> the generous permission of the editor to respond.
>
> But given that Yudelson also summons no less a figure than Maimonides
> to the defense of Darwin, along with another rabbinic luminary, Abraham
> Isaac Kook,
OK, I know it's juvenile, but....
-jc
Sanity's little helper
> http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-religion/1617169/posts
>
>
> Darwin is a Problem for Jews
>
>
> The Jerusalem Post ^ | 4/18/2006 | David Klinghoffer
>
> Posted on 04/18/2006 10:31:13 AM PDT by Zionist Conspirator
>
>
>
> Did the software in the cell, DNA, write itself? Is genetic information
> the only information that science has ever encountered that was not
> generated by an intelligent agent?
And have you ever seen such a blatant strawman?
> These are some of the questions
> raised by the scientific and cultural war going on over Charles
> Darwin's theory and its modern challenger, intelligent design
There is no scientific or cultural war. Darwin's theory is, in essence
proven fact, it was before Darwin coined it. 'Intelligent design' is
encrypted theology. There is no possible dialogue between the two, one is
science, the other is ideologically focused semantics.
--
Living your life by reading the Bible is a bit like cleaning your house by
reading the Sorcerer's Apprentice.
D Silverman FLAHN, SMLAHN
AA #2208, HB #6
raven1
>Maimonides was saying that though parts of the Bible's text may indeed
>be interpreted in other than a literal fashion, there are philosophical
>reasons that make an eternal universe incompatible with the God of the
>Torah.
This is completely irrelevant to the TOE.
--
"O Sybilli, si ergo
Fortibus es in ero
O Nobili! Themis trux
Sivat sinem? Causen Dux"
merl...@hotmail.com
I don't know why the religion proned people gets inside the philosophy
group , as they dispise philosophy as their believes are based in faith
and not in facts.
Maimonides, Elias, Jesus, Moises, etc., are part of that group of
believers. They START believing, they didn't question a comma of their
History/religious Biblum .
Mordecai!
"merl...@hotmail.com" wrote:
The header says it all - we do not want this poster posting off topic stuff
here either!
Perhaps if we change the subject so the troller gets the idea that people
hate his actions - perchance he might take a hint and go away.
--
Mordecai!
When words and actions disagree, believe actions.
When rhetoric and reality disagree, either rhetoric is wrong or reality is
wrong, and reality is Never wrong.
John Baker
spam)"@internode.on.net> wrote:
>
>
>"merl...@hotmail.com" wrote:
>
>> *This is a reply))
>>
>> I don't know why the religion proned people gets inside the philosophy
>> group , as they dispise philosophy as their believes are based in faith
>> and not in facts.
>> Maimonides, Elias, Jesus, Moises, etc., are part of that group of
>> believers. They START believing, they didn't question a comma of their
>> History/religious Biblum .
>
>The header says it all - we do not want this poster posting off topic stuff
>here either!
>Perhaps if we change the subject so the troller gets the idea that people
>hate his actions - perchance he might take a hint and go away.
The more you let him know he's bothering you, the longer he'll stay.
The only way to get a troll to leave your group is to completely
ignore him. Trolls are after attention. If you don't give him any,
he'll go elsewhere.
I suggest a mass plonking. <G>
emmas...@yahoo.co.uk
Mordecai! wrote:
> "merl...@hotmail.com" wrote:
>
> > *This is a reply))
> >
> > I don't know why the religion proned people gets inside the philosophy
> > group , as they dispise philosophy as their believes are based in faith
> > and not in facts.
> > Maimonides, Elias, Jesus, Moises, etc., are part of that group of
> > believers. They START believing, they didn't question a comma of their
> > History/religious Biblum .
>
> The header says it all - we do not want this poster posting off topic stuff
> here either!
> Perhaps if we change the subject so the troller gets the idea that people
> hate his actions - perchance he might take a hint and go away.
>
Actually Mordecai, although I agree that some of his posts are not
relevant to alt.messianic at all, I think this thread is on-topic.
And some of his articles are often quite interesting.
Far more interesting than some of the stuff we see here!
The problem is that he's crossposting them to so many different
groups. Groups which don't share the same interests.
So the thread often goes in a direction that is wildly off-topic.
Mordecai!
John Baker wrote:
True - except this is a "Christian zealot" and is not interested in normal troll
behaviour.
it could be a muslim zealot, or a hindu zealot - or whatever - the key is
"religion" and "zealot."
He is "spreading the truth" as he knows it - fighting the good fight (atheism -
evolution) and the like.
His goal is to force people to acknowledge his G_d and "repent."
He has said inside himself "Surely it is obvious that there is a G_d who created
us- and if people were not shown evolution, they would believe like I do - and
thus would come to know the truth as I know it."
Thus he is trying to get people to talk about this "important" subject (to his
way of thinking) and to stop the truth ... sorry - to stop the spread of the
very idea of evolution - which is obviously a lie (to him) and a very real
threat (to him).
This is why he posts what he does in the way he does - he is at war. He wants me
to get involved in HIS war.
In the light of the above, my own suggestion is to constantly and consistently
change the subject on him - and discuss how to get him to stop bothering
everyone.
It is just a suggestion of course.
Tim K.
"Sound of Trumpet" <soundof...@hoshmail.com> wrote in message
news:1145976071.0...@y43g2000cwc.googlegroups.com...
No he's not.
Mordecai!
emmas...@yahoo.co.uk wrote:
Agreed - that IS the problem.
If he wanted to drop in and talk - fine. I would talk to him.
If I want to craft a conversation with an athiest - I would do so within the
language which allows communication.
If I want to craft an argument with a theist - I would give the same argument -
but couched in religious terminology -to make the points.
If I wanted to craft an answer to a political group, I would likewise do so in
their idea structure.
But with all these cross posts? Communication is just not possible.
Roy Jose Lorr
A troll is anyone who disagrees with religious faith in
"evolution"... eh?
L. Raymond
> "merl...@hotmail.com" wrote:
>
>> *This is a reply))
>>
>> I don't know why the religion proned people gets inside the philosophy
>> group , as they dispise philosophy as their believes are based in faith
>> and not in facts.
>> Maimonides, Elias, Jesus, Moises, etc., are part of that group of
>> believers. They START believing, they didn't question a comma of their
>> History/religious Biblum .
>
> The header says it all - we do not want this poster posting off topic stuff
> here either!
> Perhaps if we change the subject so the troller gets the idea that people
> hate his actions - perchance he might take a hint and go away.
If your group has a FAQ which is posted fairly regularly, and if that
FAQ prohibits sermons, hit and run tactics or whatever it is the person
irritating you is doing, then you have grounds to complain to his ISP.
If you don't have a FAQ or similar list of expected behavior, though,
Mr. Baker's solution is about all you have to work with.
--
L. Raymond
Uncle Vic
<snip>
Darwin offered proof for his findings. The church offers eternal
punishment for skepticism. Which one would you buy a used car from?
--
Uncle Vic
aa#2011
Member, Earthquack's 666 club
Supervisor, EAC department of little adhesive-backed shiny plastic
L-shaped doo-dads to add feet to Jesus Fish department
It is safe to say that the bible contains equal amounts of fact, history
and pizza.
-Penn Jillette
Joseph Hertzlinger
of them?
Also see
http://groups.google.com/groups?as_umsgid=bi451q$4lb$1...@falcon.steinthal.us
Brian Fletcher
Just a little play on words.
A few hundred k's south of Darwin (Australia) was originally proposed by the
allies, for the creation of Israel after the war.
It would have been far less of a problem than any evolutionary theory :-).
BOfL
cactus
Then why can we refer to G-d as the eternal?
>
> Maimonides was saying that though parts of the Bible's text may indeed
> be interpreted in other than a literal fashion, there are philosophical
> reasons that make an eternal universe incompatible with the God of the
> Torah. Simply put, Aristotle makes God's role in the world, as a
> creator and guide, superfluous and impossible. AND DARWINISM does the
> very same thing, ascribing all creation to blind material processes, as
> Darwin himself wrote: "I would give absolutely nothing for the theory
> of natural selection if it requires miraculous additions at any one
> stage of descent."
Evolutionary theory postulates evolution without the use of deus ex
machina. That's just good science. It has developed some significant
explanatory power without resorting to the supernatural.
>
> Maimonides would ask if Darwinism nevertheless has been "demonstrated."
> Well, Darwin's followers reached a high point of self-confidence in
> 1959 with the Centennial Celebration held at the University of Chicago
> to mark the 100th-year anniversary of the publication of The Origin of
> Species. The event was notable for the total conviction on the part of
> many speakers that any debate about Darwin was over and done.
>
> But since then, the intellectual trend has changed directions. The
> Discovery Institute has compiled a list of Darwin-doubting scientists,
> a list currently standing at more than 500 doctoral researchers at
> places like Berkeley, Princeton and MIT.
This does not make them right, even if they perform brilliantly in their
chosen fields. Mr. Klinghoffer is tellingly silent as to the actual
research specialties of these various academic luminaries. I would wager
that they are not in any biology-related discipline.
>
> It is now 71 years since Rav Kook died. So obviously in writing the
> beautiful and poetic words that Larry Yudelson quotes, Kook was not
> aware of the current state of knowledge about microbiology and the
> nanotechnology of the cell. Was Kook a close student of Darwin's
> writings or of the state of biology even in his own day? Is Yudelson?
>
> In theory, it's very inspiring and idealistic to write, as Kook did,
> that: "In general this is an important principle in the conflict of
> ideas, that when an idea comes to negate some teaching in the Torah, we
> must not, to begin with, reject it, but build the edifice of the Torah
> above it, and thereby we ascend higher, and through this ascent, the
> ideas are clarified."
>
It's too bad, Mr. Klinghoffer, that you are too mired in the dead earth
to soar with Rav Kook. You should meditate more - maybe you will catch
up with him.
> In practice, however, there is simply no way to reconcile an idea with
> its precise negation. The premise of Judaism is that God commands us on
> the basis of his having created us.
Gee, Mr. Klinghoffer, I always thought that G-d commanded us on the
basis of the Covenant, because if creation were the basis, then
presumably G-d would hold the same authority over everyone and
everything, not just the Jews.
The question before us, therefore,
> is not a simple-minded one of whether the universe was made in six
> calendar days, but rather of whether the universe has a need for a God,
> period.
Wow, just a little science and suddenly we are in a panic about G-d.
G-d is beyond all that, and it is disappointing that a Jew cannnot
understand it.
>
> In the philosophical system elaborated by Darwin and his disciples,
> there is no room for a creator in any sense. To explain the existence
> of life without reference to a deity was Darwin's entire purpose.
This is good science. Do we need a G-d to create things as they are now?
Science tells us no, but can only go back so far.
>
> He developed a theory that answered his own purpose, certainly not ours
> as Jews.
Why not? It's real.
Given that his idea has neither been unambiguously
> demonstrated nor is it congenial to Jewish belief - the two-fold test
> of Maimonides - I am bewildered to find Jews who are committed to
> Judaism rushing recklessly to Darwin's defense.
>
I am Jewish, committed to Judaism. I do not rush "reckessly" to defend
evolutionary theory.